The present invention relates to a foodstuff supplement and method of producing same. The supplement has particular application as a foodstuff supplement for improving the condition of animals, including humans.
This invention more particularly relates to incorporation of multivitamins and possibly certain minerals in an oil emulsion environment without any substantial loss in vitamin potency and in a resultant product, which exhibits good shelf life capability.
Presently, there is an interest on the part of pet food manufacturers to improve the health status of pets. Firstly a manufacturer endeavours to ensure that it produces a balanced pet food that includes all the essential macronutrients in the correct proportions. Secondly the manufacturer endeavours to include in the pet food all the essential vitamins and minerals (micronutrients).
Most of these essential micronutrients are included in pet foods at the time of manufacture. Dry food pet food manufacturers may, for example, spray multivitamins on the products after they exit the drier or extruder.
Pet foods generally undergo some form of heating regime to at least pasteurise the product and in many cases to commercially sterilise the product. The purpose of the heating regime is to minimise the risk of producing foods that could potentially cause a food poisoning problem.
Potentially most multivitamins are quite unstable to heating regimes used during the manufacture of most pet foods. In the cases of ascorbic acid, niacin, riboflavin and thiamine these heating regimes may destroy between 75-100% of the activity of the aforementioned vitamins. Most of the other vitamins lose between 40-75% of their activity in typical heating regimes that are used by the food industry.
Consequently because of the typical heating regimes that are used by the food industry, pet foods are produced which have less than the ideal multivitamin content. This then has a domino affect on the health status of pets when fed on these commercially prepared pet foods. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the pets do not thrive if fed solely on one of the commercially prepared pet foods.
The pet food companies can minimise the effects of the aforementioned heating regimes by including excesses of the labile multivitamins. However, even in these circumstances there is no guarantee that such an approach will work as most of the vitamin heat stability trials have been conducted on simple model food systems and not on the complex food systems to be found in commercially prepared pet foods.
Commercial pet food manufacturers generally do not measure the vitamin content of their products. This is generally due to the analysis cost for a complete range of multivitamins being extremely high. Consequently, manufacturers tend to estimate the vitamin content of their products after processing by using a starting values and decreasing these according to kinetic considerations.
The health status of farm working animals e.g. dogs, as a consequence of dietary considerations, is also a problem in New Zealand. For example, farmers tend to feed dogs animals with either raw or cooked meat or dried biscuits especially formulated for pets or a combination of meat and biscuits. These animals tend to be given a minimal amount of food and as a consequence are reported to suffer from essential mineral and vitamin deficiencies. The problems which can arise with working animals are also relevant to sporting animals and domestic pets.
In particular, working or sporting animals such as greyhounds, racehorses, show horses, rural dogs, pig dogs etc that rely on stamina, energy and general good health are prone to the daily deficiencies. Due to processed foods and household scraps domestic animals including cats also show signs of deficiencies and require polyunsaturated oils and essential vitamins and some minerals included in their daily diet too.